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Wednesday 28 September 2016

Man vs Machine: The Story Workshop Progress And Conclusion


We entered the story workshop with few initial ideas and a possibility for development, the purpose of the day was to work out the nooks and crannies of our ideas. The process involved a lot of thoughts on paper and as we went along the ideas became more refined, closing in on our end sentence. The end results were very enlightening.






Final Decision

Through our development in the workshop as a group we have decided to focus in on our last idea. When we initially pitched it there was a few things we hadn't worked out like the climax. 

Our idea:
We hear smashing glass and hot-wiring as a man has broken into a car. He seems quite pleased with himself speeding down the street. It soon comes apparent to the audience he is a criminal on the run from the law, he notices a warrant for his arrest and paranoia sets in. Street lights and signs turn into flashing blue lights and the sounds around him are amplified, he thinks someone is shooting at the car when in fact its a car backfiring. The criminal speeds up even faster, tension builds as he thinks the threat of apprehension gets closer. He goes through a tunnel where he focuses and calms down, realises he's being paranoid. As he leaves the tunnel speeding still he is seen speeding by a real police car and a crash happens fades to black.

Camera Shots
There are things to still work out like what kind of shots are going to be needed and little fillers here and there to help link each scene a little better. We've been advised to work closer to the sourcing of our ending sentence.

"His Knees Steadied, His Heart Beat Fiercely And He Began To Run Again"


Blair Witch Project
The ending sentence can be related to the Blair Witch Project, a film that is littered with abstract shots, close ups and values highly sound design to increase tension. So the first step to strengthening our story is looking at what makes a high speed chase so intense and the shots we can create to illustrate that. So research to follow soon on that!

The When and Where
Thinking about what time and era can be crucial to the project, it would describe the setting and also what kind of cars to expect. If we want to litter the animation with chase tropes maybe looking at famous chase scenes and dissecting the locations and times. It can help the atmosphere also. 









Man vs Machine: Initial Ideas Before Workshop

Conflict
Man vs Machine

End Sentence
"His knees steadied, his heart beat fiercely, and he began to run again."




Idea's

The conflict which was given to us for our narrative project is 'Man vs Machine', it provides us with a range of ideas to explore. In modern day 'Man vs Machine' has become very popular in TV and film, this therefore could limit us in ideas as we do not wish to recreate the same story in our own way. A common trope within this conflict is that often Man wins and the Machine usually ends crumpled in the finale.



 “The real risk with AI isn't malice but competence,” Professor Hawking said. “A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble."
Stephen Hawking's warnings against artificial intelligence. 


Research within TV and Film

  • Ex_Machina and A.I. are two films that explore the idea of machine out-living man, becoming independent to the point where they think themselves as beings of their own. 

  • 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and 'Robocop' are two separate examples that have the idea that by fusing a host with advanced cybernetics it allows them to achieve things which may have been unachievable for them beforehand.


Both of the possible routes for this narrative are interesting and can be further explored.



The end sentence which was given to us fits well with out conflict, with our end sentence there can be many routes to take to reach that final end point. The way this story could go may be very interesting as the idea of Man vs Machine may be different to what we first perceived.

Possible ideas

  • A prosthesis attached to a living host that enables them to move or perform beyond what was anticipated.
  • A machine that is oppressed by man and is put beneath them, but once man disappears they can become independent and perform something.
  • A machine that ironically creates a man, an idea that comes from the origins of frankenstein.

Monday 26 September 2016

Narrative

Conflict


Man vs Machine


End Sentence

"His knees steadied, his heart beat fiercely, and he began to run again."

Assigning Roles

We have each discussed which of the 20 roles we will each assume in the coming project. We chose the roles based on our strengths in order to produce the best work out of this project.

The following roles are something we will each focus on closely, however we will each communicate and help each other accordingly to allow the project the progress smoothly and successfully.


Samuel Johnson
Director
CG Modeller
Marketing Director
Producer
Rigger

Rhys Wadmore
Researcher
Editor
Compositor
Screen Writer
Layout Artist

Danni Foley
Sound Designer
Storyboard Artist
Production Designer
Art Director
Graphic Designer

Thomas Mayfield
Render Wrangler
Lighting Director
Media Planner 
Texture Artist
Animator



Wednesday 21 September 2016

Designing Stride Animation

The Content Creators

The members who make up Stride are; Danni Foley, Rhys Wadmore, Samuel Johnson and Thomas Mayfield. We are coming together to fulfil the criteria of the Narrative and Character brief, one of our first hurdles was incorporating our ideas and designs together and come to choices on both together.


The Initial Designs




















Danni's Initial Drawing - We began brainstorming a group designation, trying to please everyone  in the group with the overall look of the blog. Danni suggested the idea of 'Stride' and the image of a stag as they fitted together which we all settled on the idea of. We began designing a logo in detail to represent our brand. we came up with the initial design of using a Stag as our logo, we picked up that a geometric look to our designs would be acceptable.


Danni then supplied us with some initial compositions using a geometry technique. Two examples, one with a fill with a dark colour palette and another as a line image. We choose not to apply colour at this point until we were happy with our logo, font and thereafter set up our blog. Once that is chosen we can do some final colour compositions. The font chosen was chose due to its clean appearance and professionalism, Avenir Next (Ultra Light). We experimented with a range of text to incorporate into the logo of the company.





Thomas applied a hatched design to the font to experiment and put the idea forward but we agreed that we should keep our font clean and sharp.


Logo Colour Compositions




Thomas created a range of colour compositions for the logo. Using the four seasons as his focus point he produced themed colour gradients for the design. We came to a subtle agreement that the winter composition gained the best results, so we began using light blues into our designs.


Header Compositions



Rhys elaborated on some header designs that Danni initially verbally suggested. The idea to add a geometric pattern somewhere within the border was to add emphasis to the look of the stag and also to make the banner look a lot more full. Rhys had the idea of placing a tree to the right that represented Yggdrasil the tree of life, the idea of the message being that it is striding toward the best of life. Rhys supplied a few different variations but ultimately we decided the geometric paper patterns in the background wasn't working.








Danni elaborated on her idea of placing a limited amount geometry along with the stag on the banner rather than to cloud the background with geometry. Danni reverted to black and white for this basic first design, once the design is finalised she would then work the colour into the banner and make it look professional, clean and sharp.









Animating the Logo




Thomas took the logo into Maya with the intent of possibly animating the stag into a running cycle. We could then possibly use the small clip at the start of our future animation.